Slashdotting a rifle....
on
Internet Hunting
·
· Score: 2, Funny
I can see it now. Site gets mentioned on slashdot. Within a half of an hour,all ammo stores are completely spent, with the rifle barrels glowing red-hot and sagging toward the ground. The entire area is covered in a light grey smoke, and police are showing up after receiving reports of automatic weapon fire.
It gives a whole new meaning to the idea of a slashdotting "melting down" the victim.
In this case, the end goal is a gizmo that can go _up_ for at least seven days continous running,
That brings us exactly back to my original point: They didn't have to go up for seven days, they didn't have to deal with environment (a mild snow storm is nothing like the upper atmosphere), and they didn't have to drag enough mass to make a profit.
Like I said, what these people did really isn't exciting or impressive at all.
I'm not saying that making a true space elevator wouldn't be hard, I'm saying that what these guys did is entirely unimpressive.
While I'm not going to go spend the money just to prove a point, it's not tha hard. A few wheels, a motor, some controlling circuitry. I haven't done the embedded programming, but one of my friends who works in factory automation cranks out things fifty times more complicated every single day.
Don't get me wrong, a space-elevator would be cool. But what's exciting about this work?
They made a robot climb a 290-foot strap. Big deal. They didn't have to worry about whether the strap would even support it's own weight (when you're talking about 60 miles, that's a tough engineering challenge), they didn't have to worry about the top end coming out of oribtal sync with the first end, they didn't have to worry about lightning strikes, and the list goes on.
Now I'm not just trying to be a jerk here, I just really can't see anything terribly exciting in what they've done.
given the dismal % yield on most charity soliciting
That's just the problem, their soliciting. You can't give money to a single charity without forever being flooded with a hundred other charities calling you for more money.
In my last house, someone with the previous number had once given money to the Veterens of Foreign Wars and the local Police charity. It did not matter how many times I told them that I would never, ever give them a penny because they called so often, they never quit. And neither did the hundred other charities with whom the donation lists had been shared.
I really wouldn't mind giving money to more charities. I just wish that they could see it as a kind, benevolent act, and be thankful for it without pestering me for the rest of my life.
Weren't we flooded with marketing hype some time ago about video cards that could render Toy Story in real-time? Goodbye, Pixar, hello $10/hour high-school student with a GeForce 6800 Ultra.
One of my friends went on a choral tour of Romania one summer. While he was there, he lost all of his energy, and it got worse and worse. When he got back, they started checking for mono and other illnesses, and they all came back negative.
In the end, they found a virus that he had picked up there, that was *extremely* rare - I wish I could remember the name of it. According to his doctors, the only really effective treatment was 12 to 18 months of bedrest. They said that after about 6 months, he'd start feeling much better - but if he didn't stay on bedrest for the entire duration, the virus would likely come right back as soon as he started expending any energy.
So, the poor guy had to lay in a bed for a year and a half. He was bored out of his mind, and just about went crazy.
Have the boot scripts been changed? I tried Gentoo some time ago, and saw that if there was a problem with any of the boot scripts, they would stop and wait for a key press before the boot process could continue. That alone was enough to make me wipe it out.
Yes, I could have re-written the boot scripts, but I had better things to do with my time.
Newbies to Linux are almost *always* confused. Sad, but true. At least in my dealings with family, friends, coworkers, and faceless persons online, that's what I've seen.
Not that it's unique to Linux, it happens with newbies to most all operating systems.
First, separate the web serving from the database server, put them on different machines.
Second, web serving is easily (and massively) scalable. Buy a file server with a good RAID array (and backups!), then a bunch of front-end web servers. Start with round-robbing DNS for load-balancing. If you want, move to some LVS-based load balancers for failover, etc..
Third, database clustering is not an easy thing to do - if your database server doesn't offer good, scalable clustering, then you just have to buy a single, beefy machine.
For SC2004, SCinet expects to bring 8 OC-192c circuits into the convention center. This kind of bandwidth exceeds the available bandwidth into and out all but the largest countries in the world.
Considering that the data center that my servers are in has two OC-192s in it, that it's not a terribly large data center, and that I'm not even in a terribly large city, the above statement sounds a bit on the sensational side to me.
WordPerfect was a very good contender at the 6.0a level - until Corel took over, and Corel has a good history of making things mediocre. That was when it really started to sink, M$ gained more market share, and the nails were in the coffin.
The one possibility for Novell taking Linux seriously is the fact that Novell's market share just keeps shrinking and shrinking, and there's not much chance for it to ever come back to the glory days of old. If they want to keep being major players, they simply have to latch on to something, and do it right. Linux is an easy choice.
Capacity is not the only reason people buy SCSI, but that doesn't mean that they'd like a lot more capacity anyway.
In a lot of situations, given a ~10% performance difference vs. a 100% capacity gain, it's a given that I'll go with capacity - especially since the RAID arrays I build typically max out the busses they're connected to, and the small percentage difference won't matter.
I've bought a lot of Seagates over the past couple of years, and never had a problem - until I got a batch of 120's that started crapping out like flies. Every other drive before then (and after then) has been fine.
Before that, I'd bought Fujitsus for about a year, until nearly every one of them went belly-up in a short amount of time.
Wait, I've also had Western Digital drives crap out in large numbers before. And what about the whole IBM "DeathStar" fiasco?
Don't forget SMP opens up new opportunities for security problems
BSD developpers like to hide behind that, but I don't recall any security problems arising in any OS from SMP support. Buffer overflows, unchecked user data, etc. aren't things that come about because of SMP.
... but for the life of me, I couldn't find one with a redundant power supply. I imagine their 4-way machine probably has the option, but I didn't need four processers, just two.
I've seen providers with bandwidth and latency guarantees before. But, keep in mind that:
1. They only guarantee bandwidth within their own network, and under certain conditions 2. They only guarantee latencies within their own network 3. They only guarantee bandwidth and latency a certain percentage of the time, not 100%. 4. They are usually very expensive 5. Your recompense if they don't meet the guarantees are minimal.
As far as items 1 and 2, you really just can't do anything else. Company A simply cannot stake financial risk on the performance of Companies C, D, E, and H through M.
As for numbers three through five combined, if you wanted to guarantee bandwidth/latency 100% of the time, you end up having to pay horrendous amounts for the ability to do so. Remember, script-kiddies with $10/month dialups have brought people spending millions for connectivity to their knees without much trouble.
When you're talking "9's", each 9 that you add drives the cost up exponentially. It doesn't take many 9's before the cost to actually provide the service level is much greater than most anyone is willing to pay for it.
A combination of government interference where it's detrimental, and little or none where it would be beneficial.
As an example, if I want a t1 line to my house, the phone company is prohibitted by law from charging less than a government-chosen rate. Stifling competition is rarely good for the consumer.
On the other hand, when phone companies in my area have prevented competition through monopolistic practices - not only in violation of FCC ruling, but in direct disobeyance of a judge's ruling - there has been nothing but a slap on the wrist.
Funny, until a few years ago, nearly all Internet-based applications (and hence, traffic) was definitely server-client based. HTTP, SMTP, POP, DNS, all server-client. With the recent advent of P2P apps, that may have changed in terms of raw traffic, but just because one person downloads a single 4 GB ISO hardly out-weighs the fact that another 100,000 have sat down in that time frame and used distinctly client-server applications.
If you don't have a "always on", syncronous connection with static ip where you can do what ever you want on any port, it is NOT an internet service.
So, once you put up a firewall, you no longer have an Internet service?
I once read an article where a guy was trying to go as extreme as he could, just for fun. He was using massive peltiers to cool the water flowing through his main CPU loop, and a larger water-cooling setup to cool the peltiers.
He ended up freezing the coolant in the primary loop. : )
Yeah, a guy must do more damage running a 5-horsepower motor for an hour on Saturday morning, burning almost a quart of gasoline, than he does driving his 270-horsepower SUV around for fifteen hours that week, burning forty gallons or more.
Slashdot Mirror
I can see it now. Site gets mentioned on slashdot. Within a half of an hour,all ammo stores are completely spent, with the rifle barrels glowing red-hot and sagging toward the ground. The entire area is covered in a light grey smoke, and police are showing up after receiving reports of automatic weapon fire.
It gives a whole new meaning to the idea of a slashdotting "melting down" the victim.
steve
In this case, the end goal is a gizmo that can go _up_ for at least seven days continous running,
That brings us exactly back to my original point: They didn't have to go up for seven days, they didn't have to deal with environment (a mild snow storm is nothing like the upper atmosphere), and they didn't have to drag enough mass to make a profit.
Like I said, what these people did really isn't exciting or impressive at all.
I'm not saying that making a true space elevator wouldn't be hard, I'm saying that what these guys did is entirely unimpressive.
steve
While I'm not going to go spend the money just to prove a point, it's not tha hard. A few wheels, a motor, some controlling circuitry. I haven't done the embedded programming, but one of my friends who works in factory automation cranks out things fifty times more complicated every single day.
steve
Don't get me wrong, a space-elevator would be cool. But what's exciting about this work?
They made a robot climb a 290-foot strap. Big deal. They didn't have to worry about whether the strap would even support it's own weight (when you're talking about 60 miles, that's a tough engineering challenge), they didn't have to worry about the top end coming out of oribtal sync with the first end, they didn't have to worry about lightning strikes, and the list goes on.
Now I'm not just trying to be a jerk here, I just really can't see anything terribly exciting in what they've done.
steve
given the dismal % yield on most charity soliciting
That's just the problem, their soliciting. You can't give money to a single charity without forever being flooded with a hundred other charities calling you for more money.
In my last house, someone with the previous number had once given money to the Veterens of Foreign Wars and the local Police charity. It did not matter how many times I told them that I would never, ever give them a penny because they called so often, they never quit. And neither did the hundred other charities with whom the donation lists had been shared.
I really wouldn't mind giving money to more charities. I just wish that they could see it as a kind, benevolent act, and be thankful for it without pestering me for the rest of my life.
steve
Weren't we flooded with marketing hype some time ago about video cards that could render Toy Story in real-time? Goodbye, Pixar, hello $10/hour high-school student with a GeForce 6800 Ultra.
(Yes, that's a joke.)
steve
One of my friends went on a choral tour of Romania one summer. While he was there, he lost all of his energy, and it got worse and worse. When he got back, they started checking for mono and other illnesses, and they all came back negative.
In the end, they found a virus that he had picked up there, that was *extremely* rare - I wish I could remember the name of it. According to his doctors, the only really effective treatment was 12 to 18 months of bedrest. They said that after about 6 months, he'd start feeling much better - but if he didn't stay on bedrest for the entire duration, the virus would likely come right back as soon as he started expending any energy.
So, the poor guy had to lay in a bed for a year and a half. He was bored out of his mind, and just about went crazy.
steve
DOH!!!
I had it confused with the LFS bootscripts. Mea culpa.
steve
Have the boot scripts been changed? I tried Gentoo some time ago, and saw that if there was a problem with any of the boot scripts, they would stop and wait for a key press before the boot process could continue. That alone was enough to make me wipe it out.
Yes, I could have re-written the boot scripts, but I had better things to do with my time.
steve
Newbies to Linux are almost *always* confused. Sad, but true. At least in my dealings with family, friends, coworkers, and faceless persons online, that's what I've seen.
Not that it's unique to Linux, it happens with newbies to most all operating systems.
steve
First, separate the web serving from the database server, put them on different machines.
Second, web serving is easily (and massively) scalable. Buy a file server with a good RAID array (and backups!), then a bunch of front-end web servers. Start with round-robbing DNS for load-balancing. If you want, move to some LVS-based load balancers for failover, etc..
Third, database clustering is not an easy thing to do - if your database server doesn't offer good, scalable clustering, then you just have to buy a single, beefy machine.
steve
For SC2004, SCinet expects to bring 8 OC-192c circuits into the convention
center. This kind of bandwidth exceeds the available bandwidth into and out all
but the largest countries in the world.
Considering that the data center that my servers are in has two OC-192s in it, that it's not a terribly large data center, and that I'm not even in a terribly large city, the above statement sounds a bit on the sensational side to me.
steve
I just reinstalled RH9 because FC2 was causing my Dell Optiplex GX260 to oops and crash on a null pointer dereference at interrupt time.
Have you ever thought that your hardware may have been causing FC2 to crash?
steve
WordPerfect was a very good contender at the 6.0a level - until Corel took over, and Corel has a good history of making things mediocre. That was when it really started to sink, M$ gained more market share, and the nails were in the coffin.
The one possibility for Novell taking Linux seriously is the fact that Novell's market share just keeps shrinking and shrinking, and there's not much chance for it to ever come back to the glory days of old. If they want to keep being major players, they simply have to latch on to something, and do it right. Linux is an easy choice.
Steve
Capacity is not the only reason people buy SCSI, but that doesn't mean that they'd like a lot more capacity anyway.
In a lot of situations, given a ~10% performance difference vs. a 100% capacity gain, it's a given that I'll go with capacity - especially since the RAID arrays I build typically max out the busses they're connected to, and the small percentage difference won't matter.
steve
I've bought a lot of Seagates over the past couple of years, and never had a problem - until I got a batch of 120's that started crapping out like flies. Every other drive before then (and after then) has been fine.
Before that, I'd bought Fujitsus for about a year, until nearly every one of them went belly-up in a short amount of time.
Wait, I've also had Western Digital drives crap out in large numbers before. And what about the whole IBM "DeathStar" fiasco?
Every manufacturer gets bad runs. Really.
steve
Don't forget SMP opens up new opportunities for security problems
BSD developpers like to hide behind that, but I don't recall any security problems arising in any OS from SMP support. Buffer overflows, unchecked user data, etc. aren't things that come about because of SMP.
steve
Just how good is the SMP code in it?
steve
steve
I've seen providers with bandwidth and latency guarantees before. But, keep in mind that:
1. They only guarantee bandwidth within their own network, and under certain conditions
2. They only guarantee latencies within their own network
3. They only guarantee bandwidth and latency a certain percentage of the time, not 100%.
4. They are usually very expensive
5. Your recompense if they don't meet the guarantees are minimal.
As far as items 1 and 2, you really just can't do anything else. Company A simply cannot stake financial risk on the performance of Companies C, D, E, and H through M.
As for numbers three through five combined, if you wanted to guarantee bandwidth/latency 100% of the time, you end up having to pay horrendous amounts for the ability to do so. Remember, script-kiddies with $10/month dialups have brought people spending millions for connectivity to their knees without much trouble.
When you're talking "9's", each 9 that you add drives the cost up exponentially. It doesn't take many 9's before the cost to actually provide the service level is much greater than most anyone is willing to pay for it.
steve
A combination of government interference where it's detrimental, and little or none where it would be beneficial.
As an example, if I want a t1 line to my house, the phone company is prohibitted by law from charging less than a government-chosen rate. Stifling competition is rarely good for the consumer.
On the other hand, when phone companies in my area have prevented competition through monopolistic practices - not only in violation of FCC ruling, but in direct disobeyance of a judge's ruling - there has been nothing but a slap on the wrist.
steve
The internet IS P2P
Funny, until a few years ago, nearly all Internet-based applications (and hence, traffic) was definitely server-client based. HTTP, SMTP, POP, DNS, all server-client. With the recent advent of P2P apps, that may have changed in terms of raw traffic, but just because one person downloads a single 4 GB ISO hardly out-weighs the fact that another 100,000 have sat down in that time frame and used distinctly client-server applications.
If you don't have a "always on", syncronous connection with static ip where you can do what ever you want on any port, it is NOT an internet service.
So, once you put up a firewall, you no longer have an Internet service?
steve
steve
I once read an article where a guy was trying to go as extreme as he could, just for fun. He was using massive peltiers to cool the water flowing through his main CPU loop, and a larger water-cooling setup to cool the peltiers.
He ended up freezing the coolant in the primary loop. : )
steve
they are ecological nightmare
Yeah, a guy must do more damage running a 5-horsepower motor for an hour on Saturday morning, burning almost a quart of gasoline, than he does driving his 270-horsepower SUV around for fifteen hours that week, burning forty gallons or more.
steve